This invention relates generally to ion beam sources and more particularly to ion beam sources generated through the use of laser resonance ionization as the initial ionizing mechanism. This invention is a result of a contract with the U.S. Department of Energy.
Many of today's basic and applied research technologies require extremely bright sources of mass selected negative ion beams or neutral beams. Injection into high-energy tandem accelerators relies on intense mass selected negative ion sources. Sputtering and ion implanation of solids also require intense negative ion beams. In the art, various means have been used in the past for producing mass selected negative ion beams and neutral beams which generally require rather complicated components of apparatus to produce the required ion beams. In an attempt to reduce the complexity of ion beam generators, laser applications have been suggested in which the laser light of monochromatic-wavelength resonate with the energy level of the material to be ionized is used to produce mass selected positive ions which are then accelerated from the region onto a substrate or directed into an evacuated beam tube for transport to a location where the ion beam is ultimately used by a utiliation device. The turnable laser provides high intensity and mass selected ion beams of low divergence and narrow energy spread. The present invention relates to this type of ion beam generator.